[As another semester
concludes, a series recapping some of the wonderful texts we read in my
classes, along with some other Spring work of mine. Leading up to a preview of
coming attractions for the Summer and Fall semesters. I’d love to hear about
your work, past, present, or future, in comments!]
[NOTE: This is a
repeat of a post from my Spring 2016 recap series—but it’s still all true, if
not indeed more true still.]
On a long
overdue, vital first step.
Ever since my
first American Literature I syllabus, in the fall of my first year at Fitchburg
State (2005-6), I’ve focused on the
same central idea: complementing more familiar authors/texts and
communities (what I call the Story of America) with less well-known and just as
significant ones (other American Stories). While I’ve added or substracted
individual authors and works over those eleven years, that core philosophy and
structure for the course have remained constant, and I’ve been pretty happy
with the results. (Not least because students have often been particularly
drawn to and inspired by the unfamiliar authors and works, from Cabeza
de Vaca to Annis
Stockton and Judith Sargent Murray, William
Apess to Fanny
Fern.) But there’s been one noticeable problem across all those sections—my
course’s version of early American diversity has featured almost entirely
voices from the Native, African, and European American cultures and perspectives.
There’s
something to be said for extending beyond the Anglo/Puritan focused narratives
of America’s origin points, of course. But as I wrote at length in my third
book, even the more multicultural narrative of American history and identity
has tended to elide the many other communities and cultures that have also been
part of America throughout its history: from the Moroccan
Muslims (Moors) in Revolutionary South Carolina to the Filippino
villagers in 18th century Louisiana, the longstanding
Mexican communities throughout the Southwest and West to the Chinese
arrivals to turn of the 19th century Alta California, among
others. And leaving those communities out of our collective memories doesn’t
just make our histories less accurate—it also makes possible arguments that
these cultures (Muslim Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans) represent
late 20th and early 21st century shifts in American
identity, an image of a changing America that can all too easily play into
“Make America Great Again” style mythmaking and bigotry.
The question
I’ve faced, then, has been how to add these cultures—many of whom did not, as
far as I know (and please correct my knowledge in comments!), produce written
texts in their early periods—into my American Lit I syllabus. For this
semester’s section, I decided to cheat slightly, and to include excerpts from Yung
Wing’s autobiography My Life in China and America (1909,
and thus well outside our class chronology although it begins with events from
our last focal time period) as the course’s final reading. It couldn’t have
gone better—the students really got into Yung’s portrayals of his arrival to
the United States and his preparatory school and college days, as well as his
evolving idea for the
Chinese Educational Mission; and I was able to frame that specific
discussion by presenting some of these precise ideas of expanding and deepening
our understanding of American diversity and identity. Just one small step in
that direction (and again, I welcome ideas for other authors and texts I might
include to continue that work), but it felt like a really significant one
nonetheless.
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What have
you been or are you working on?
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